


leaves from the vine

by kyouko



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, it's a tag now sorry i don't make the rules, let's make that a tag, marco's mother isn't a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyouko/pseuds/kyouko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wonders when Marco's begun talking of Sina and the King with a fire-brilliance that threatens to burn him right up.</p><p>And in the end, it does.</p><p>(or: The only promise she asks of him is the one he cannot keep.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	leaves from the vine

**Author's Note:**

> reuploaded from my tumblr, heichews, bc i decided i liked it enough to upload here. inspired by this art (http://erwinsmithe.tumblr.com/post/65864204673).
> 
> the jeanmarco is VERY lightly implied (deals more w/ marco and his mother) but if anyone's interested, i'll write a more in-depth fic of their relationship that basically follows this setup if it makes any sense???? yeah!!!

**i.**

She watches him, a boy of eight, slipping on the dew-kissed grass and dancing beneath red-gold leaves, the sun in the brilliance of his smile and the light of his eyes. He reaches up with a tan, chubby hand, fingers brushing the sea-shell curve of a leaf before it slips past him, just barely.

Her fingers grasp the edge of the page, thin and white and shivery in her fingers before their gaze meets, and she stares, at the honest expectancy of his gaze and she can't stop a smile from spreading across her face, thinking— _infectious._ He laughs, soft and light as summer song, the sound trapped in the space where time suspends, where there is nothing but the crisp scent of morning, a mother, and her eight year old boy.

And she thinks she'd like to remember him like this forever, a little boy reaching up to catch leaves as if they were angel kisses, _her_ little boy—and she wonders when he's gotten so old, when he's become more than a bundle in her arms that she'd whisper to and press kisses against his forehead, child-hands locking with hers, when he's stopped twirling 'round the kitchen table with silver forks in his hands, wearing the cape of velvet green fabric that she bought from the market so he could be in the Military, when he's begun talking of Sina and the King with a fire-brilliance that threatens to burn him right up.

And in the end, it does.

**ii** **.**

He is ten now, and the velvet-green cape is too small for him, the hand-stitched emblem peeling off. The silver forks aren't strong enough to cut the backs of Titan necks. The softness of his hands fades into dark scars as he ventures out into the woods with his father and returns with a hare, smile growing wide when his father says the King will be proud. She doesn't _want_ the King to be proud of him, because his her Marco, and that is enough.

She has never taken it for anything more than childish ambition, but the years have fashioned it into something akin to steel that reflects the light of his smile and his heart, the urge to join the Military, to be— _someone_. And she would rather him be her Marco, eight years old beneath a tree, dreaming of sunset trapped in leaves that he can't catch with his soft child hands, _safe_ forever.

His eyes are too dark, too bright, too _solemn_ to be Marco's and she tucks him in that night despite his protests that he's too old for that, that in the Military he'll have to sleep alone. She wraps the sheets around them and pulls him close, feels how much he's grown and how the both of them will hardly fit on one bed anymore, feels how her arms can barely wrap around his waist, feels that he's too big for her to protect any more, feels (fears) that he's flying further and further out of reach.

He's sleeping again, breath even and easy and in that moment there isn't a struggle to survive but a boy (young—hers—always) and his mother. She kisses his temple and makes him promise something that she knows he can't keep:

"Don't ever change."

**iii.**

He is eleven. In one year he'll serve the King. In one year he'll grow up faster, years of adulthood and the worn taste of war condensed into a child. In a year he'll be gone, fighting a war that isn't his, serving a King who doesn't know him. She doesn't want to see that, but she knows the war will not blot the starlight of his eyes and smile.

The dust and debris will from a place worlds away— _Shiganshina,_ the name is like blood on their lips—where the walls of his own little haven come crashing down to bury him alive, where the body count and stench of false safety and death from a life that is so different from his own shocks him and breaks him.

They sit at the kitchen table, safe in their little walls of Trost, holed into their houses with nothing but a fear of _what if, what if, what if_ and _when, when, when._ They talk of the King sending a few of the Scouting Legion out on a death mission, an execution wrapped up in filthy lies and stamped with a sky-blue ribbon. He drops his fork and the sound is loud in the small house, full of thoughts and promises.

She looks into his eyes, sees a universe of dark stars and she knows, then, that the promise has already been broken.

**iv.**

He is twelve, taller than her, almost as tall as the doorframe, so tall that she is afraid he'll blow right over and crash and burn. His bags are packed and there is a tightness in her chest, a tension, _knowing_ that he might not—ever—return. His gaze is still bright, hands still warm, voice still earnest as he pulls her into a hug, as she wraps her arms around him and wishes time to wait and descend to a place where she does not have to let go.

He does. She pulls on the hem of his shirt, brushing crumbs off his pants, anything to slow down the clock that seems to have twisted itself around her and everyone. He leans forward, kisses her forehead and makes a promise that he'll be _safe_ , but they both know that promises are not meant to be kept. Not here, not now.

And she realizes, idly, as she's buttoning the shirt of his father's that he has grown into, that the promises are as reliable as the wall.

"I'll write," he says honestly, and she knows he will, but that isn't what she's worried about. "I'll tell you every little detail of my military life."

And she wonders if he's looking for approval, somewhere, within himself or from the Military or from the King, when all he's ever wanted is _there_ , in a tiny woman called his mother. She only holds him tighter, maps the breath of a son grown too quickly on her cheeks, of the boy she is— _everything is—_ too small to protect.

"I know you will," and she does.

**v.**

He does. Every day, he never fails to write. She never fails to receive one.

He tells her of the rigorous training, of three who hail from Shiganshina (and thinking of them makes her heart burst in rapid, short little bursts, make her feel a wave of pity and sympathy so strong she freezes), of his best friend and the Military Police, of Keith Shadis and of his comrades, whom he trusts with his life as much as he trusts the maneuver gear. But maybe that is his problem, maybe that is why she worries—he puts his trust in wire cables like puppet strings and the monsters inside of men.

(Or is it the men inside of monsters? It isn't as if there is a difference, anyway.)

Then, one day, a letter never returns home.

(Neither does he.)

**vi.**

She dreams of him. She sees him in her sleep, safe with the King, swathed in the green robe he wanted so badly, safe and sound, held in the gentle arms of fate. She dreams of his eyes and his gaze, the dimples that she remembers tracing with her fingers from the day when he was four, and the hands that reached up to grab sunset in a leaf.

She dreams of the her arms around his, tiny hands clutching hers, eternity in a moment as he promises, as he grows from a baby to a child to a man to a pawn, a little boy she couldn't have protected even with her life.

She dreams of her husband, red-rimmed eyes, lips cracked and dry, empty bottles in the garbage and on the table, sealed envelopes of money that they haven't earned glaring and mocking on the wooden surface of the kitchen table that can only mean one thing.

(Or, at least, she tells herself that this is a dream.)

She sees her Marco, brilliant and bright and burning, a pawn that marches towards the door and—

— _rap rap rap._

She springs from her seat faster than she can finish her thoughts and she's running for the door, pulling on her skirts, dreams mingling with reality and she knows this can't be, _can't_ be—

"Marco—"

—and it isn't.

There is a youth with sandy hair, tanned skin, scars on his hands and his face. He is someone's son, but he isn't hers, and that isn't enough. His shaking fist is pressed over his heart and his shoulders heave as he struggles to catch his breath.

Her heart stops for a moment.

And when he opens his eyes she sees her Marco in them, brilliant and bright and burning, her Marco in all of his comrades, safe and sound, writing letters, her Marco gone from him but not from them and that is not even near enough but it is. He's blubbering, tears coming faster than he can stop them, shoulders heaving--

"For the both of us, now," she hears someone say in a choked, cracked, broken voice and it takes her a while to realize that that was her own, "You have to win. Promise?"

(And she knows that promises are made to be broken, even as he opens his tear-lidded eyes and gazes at her with a determination she sees every night in her dreams, _in her son's eyes_ , even as he nods and clenches his fists in a small gesture that means his heart is, was, hers—and Marco's.)

"I will," he says, voice shaking and stronger than she could ever imagine, and she doesn't doubt it.


End file.
